Alright, so for the last 2 weeks or so, my computer has been shutting down immediately after gets to the desktop, after I start it up for the day. Now it takes 4 boots to stay on, and I don't know why. I am pretty sure its not a virus, as I did a virus scan of my entire hard drive 4 different times. And now it just shut off randomly.

Also, I don't know if this is a symptom of this or not, but now my computer is running really slowly, with nothing in the background except Folding @ Home, and that I am sure is not the problem.

On top of all this, my ping is really high, around 400. What the hell is going on?

As for info, I am running a 3 year old XP setup, with a year old motherboard and graphics card, installed at the same time. Everything else is 3 years old. I have McAffe as an anti-virus program. And I am pretty sure I didn't install anything to make this happen.

Firstly, if your pc is under a valid warraty, you should consider taking it back for the store techs to look at. Thats what they are there for !

PSU is your power supply unit. The cord you have from the mains electricity plugs into it Unfortunately, the best way to test a PSU is to have a spare, working PSU around, and seeing if you can reproduce the problem.

system temps are the temperatures of your different components. If parts are getting too hot, this can manifest in the way you describe.

an easy to use program that will summarise this for you is pc wizard, just downloand, install and run, click the little picture of the hot/cold gauge for the temps

Firstly, if your pc is under a valid warraty, you should consider taking it back for the store techs to look at. Thats what they are there for!

Mines custom built, and even then, it doesn't have any original parts to it to begin with.

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PSU is your power supply unit. The cord you have from the mains electricity plugs into it Unfortunately, the best way to test a PSU is to have a spare, working PSU around, and seeing if you can reproduce the problem.

I'll try the Power cord from my other computer.

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system temps are the temperatures of your different components. If parts are getting too hot, this can manifest in the way you describe.

I think that is the problem. The fan has been going very loudly, now that you mention it. And looking back there, there is a lot of dust in the fan. Should I just open it up and blast some compressed air on the fan to clear it out?

EDIT: Alright, I downloaded PC Wizard, what exactly should I be looking for?

EDIT 2: HOLY CRAP, everything is running around 90 to 100 degrees farenhiet! That is not good.

Mines custom built, and even then, it doesn't have any original parts to it to begin with.

I'll try the Power cord from my other computer.

I think that is the problem. The fan has been going very loudly, now that you mention it. And looking back there, there is a lot of dust in the fan. Should I just open it up and blast some compressed air on the fan to clear it out?

EDIT: Alright, I downloaded PC Wizard, what exactly should I be looking for?

EDIT 2: HOLY CRAP, everything is running around 90 to 100 degrees farenhiet! That is not good.

What is the normal temp, and what should I do about this?

Your CPU isn't that hot, actually. Open your case up and dust that sucker! Dust acts as an insulator in computers and traps heat. Computers have been known to do strange things as a result of the heat.

Haha, that's not hot at all. The Athlon 64 X2 processor line has a 49-61C maximum temperature range, depending on which model you have. In Fahrenheit, that's a 120-141F range and neither of your cores are anywhere near that. The motherboard and GPU have similar temperature tolerances, so those temps are normal for a computer.

Ok, I'll dust it soon. It just seems really bad that my processors are running at all most 100 degrees. Ive had my iPod freeze up on me while I was running in 100 degree temps, so that is why I thought it was bad.

EDIT: Okay, so I dusted off the inside of my CPU, and there was a lot of dust coming off. However, it didn't solve the problem. I try switching power cables like Astro said.

Misread astro's post by accident. Okay, any other suggestions beyond the PSU thing? I don't think I can replace it without damaging my system.

PSUs are easily interchangeable, they plug into the mainboard and your drives. To replace, unplug. Easy. No engineering skills required. As niner mentioned, those temps arent that bad, though you'd have to monitor temp changes when the pc is at work (eg. gaming/folding), to get a better idea of whether a component is overheating. Folding can definitely strain your CPU or GPU.

Also worth thinking about though, seeing you mentioned you have a 3 year old xp setup, surely a good old dissassemble/dust/reformat can get rule out that it isnt a beleagured old install you have at the root of your problems. Hopefully, you have an xp cd around... Like cars, PCs could do with a good tune up at least twice a year

^ I don't think it is some old install. My computer has been fine, this problem only turned up in the last month or so. I also don't have a XP cd lying around, so I am not going to reformat. It is also would to be a pain to get the 250+ gigs of crap on my hard drive to begin with.

I'm also not sure I could unplug the PSU without breaking something physically. I am a bit of a klutz.

I've also gone through the Event logs on my computer, and every time it starts up, it comes up with an error on the "Service Control Manager" thing every time it starts up. Could this potentially be the problem?

Keeping non system files on a system drive is playing with fire, especially with windows If you value those files, Id be looking into a means of backing them up. I lost some Valentines Day Pics in 2003 when a HDrive fried, Im still in trouble over it

As for the SCM. It could be a problem, sure - but youd need to give us more info about what the log is saying and what services may be affected, and/or when the SCM is messing up. It quite often does it during startup, but good to clarify

Have you added/removed any programs recently, particularly ones that have sone type of networking/access component in them?